The Needs Of The One
by S4ltv1n3g4r
Summary: Having forcibly barged into Harry's house, Bellatrix gives Harry lessons in the Dark Arts for her own purposes, but perhaps it is he who will teach her that love is stronger than manipulation.
1. Breaking and Entering

It is with honesty and a bit of envy that I report that I do not own any component of this fanfiction or the style of writing I have utilized, but have only twisted the truth as simply as turning on a computer. If you desire to read the truth of this universe, might I suggest picking up a book, and, if you simply prefer the pleasant and fluffy, I strongly advise that you hit the 'back' button and return to whatever you were searching for, because this isn't it. However, if you enjoy stories about complicated relationships, torture curses, stolen artifacts, and cherry pie, do read on, but I can only implore you to not scream at any point.

The story begins as Harry Potter exits the Ministry of Magic after the reading of Sirius Black's will. The reading of a will is often unpleasant, as it reminds the people in attendance that a loved one has died, but it can be made even more unpleasant by the messy handwriting of the deceased. Take, for example, that Harry had been emancipated as an adult, but the handwriting was so incomprehensible that the word 'emancipate' had been mistaken for a variety of grizzly and horrible words, the least grizzly and horrible of which included 'emanciate' and 'casatrate'. Thus, Harry left the Ministry two hours later than schedueled, picked up his broomstick and rode halfheartedly to the house he'd inherited.

A fresh wave of "Kreacher won't, Kreacher won't!" greeted him as he slowly cracked the door open as to not disturb the portrait of Mrs. Black, but his mind was too occupied to notice the house elf. It was hard for him to believe Sirius was dead, and when he could bring himself to think of it, the result was uncontrollable sobbing. Sitting at the empty kitchen table, with Kreacher still screaming in the background, his thoughts turned to Bellatrix Lestrange. If he would blame someone other than himself for Sirius's death, it would be her, she'd killed him after all. _She killed him,_ he repeated in his head. Her own cousin. The vile woman deserved to be tortured until she was no better off then the Longbottoms, befallen by a fate worse than death, like loss of soul...Harry cringed and shook the disturbing images from his mind. It wasn't like him to harbor a burning hatred, and he wasn't going to start now.

Our world is full of ironic coincidences. They happen all around us, without recieving a second thought, but although they need not always be unpleasant, their unpleasantness knows no bounds. For example, you may have booked plane tickets next to your ex-significant other you were hoping to avoid--and his or her new partner of the same gender. You may be crammed by a school bully into the only locker in school containing a pipe bomb. And, you may find yourself thinking about your godfather's killer, only to have her turn up on your doorstep at that very moment.

Hearing a knock on the door, Harry opened it, thinking it was the Order of the Phoenix, but, to his great shock and displeasure, who should be standing there but Bellatrix. He didn't see her face at first, but from the first 'Crucio' he was sure it was her. He tried to struggle to his feet, but the pain was too much, and all he could manage before falling limp on the floor was, "Wha--what are you--"

"Doing here?" she completed in a menacing tone, reaping every bit of pleasure as she could from Harry's writhing and screaming.. "Isn't it obvious? I'm an escaped convict. I have no where to stay, and Narcissa won't have me in her house...but I doubted even my filthy blood-traitor cousin would leave his estate to the likes of you." She lifted the curse and examined her surroundings with an air of superiority, sitting down on a dusty sofa. "Kreacher," she called, "Would you get me some water and a newspaper?" She magicked the door shut and smiled in a deranged manner.

"Anything for Mistress Bellatrix," Kreacher said gratefully as Harry pulled himself to his feet. "Kreacher has dreamed of the day when he would serve his Mistress once more."

"Kreacher, stay put! That's an order," Harry bellowed, but Kreacher wasn't listening. "I'm not going to let you barge into my house and act like some sort of dictator! Get out now or I'll go down to the Ministry and get the Aurors to eradicate you!" He was breathing quickly, his hand grasped tightly around his wand as if in attempt to suffocate it.

"Oh, is that so?" Bellatrix mocked coldly, smirking at him from across the room. "Humor me. 'Eradicate' me. Just try and beat me at my own games. Go on, torture me." A hush fell over Number 12, Grimmauld Place, in which deadly glares seemed to bounce off every reflective surface. Harry was uttery dumbfounded, a word which here means 'at a loss for words'. "Well, until you grow some backbone, I could use a roof over my head." Finally, he was able to manage a sentence.

"You're...you're not going to kill me?"

"Oh, of course not. It's not as if you're any threat," Bellatrix explained flatly, picking up the copy of the Daily Prophet that Kreacher had just handed her.

Harry was fuming. Had the encounter been an old cartoon, his anger would have set him on fire. "I WILL NOT HAVE DEATH EATERS IN MY HOUSE!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, chucking at her the first thing he could reach, which happened to be a couch cushion, and missed by about three meters.

"Well then, there shouldn't be a problem," she said.

Was there something Harry was missing? "What does that mean?" he asked.

"I've said too much. I can't trust you, so just shut up now."

"Why not?"

There was a long pause, in which Bellatrix seemed unsure of whether to scream or laugh. "Because you're Harry Potter!" she exclaimed. "If there's anyone I can't trust, it's you!" She looked away, determined not to make contact with him, aside from an occasional snide remark.

"Fine. Go and get yourself cleaned up then," Harry droned coldly, stalking out of the room. "I won't have you strutting about my house looking all disheveled and smelling of flatulence." She clutched her hair in offense and was silenced for the remainder of the day.


	2. Getting Answers

There are certain things in this universe that are so near impossible that people consider them to be impossible anyway, such as falling off the Empire State Building and surviving or decimating humanity with a single thought (fortunately for us). Since I do not own the setting or characters of this story, it is logical to assume that some elements of its plot will be near impossible, such as Bellatrix barging her way into Harry's dwelling without posing a threat and Harry allowing Bellatrix to insult his godfather. The same thing dawned on Harry as he woke up the next morning, and with his first few steps out of bed, he decided it was all just a horrid dream.

As he went about his daily routine, he realized this was not the case. Bellatrix was sleeping on the couch downstairs, having taken care to follow Harry's instructions and get herself cleaned up, and as he showered, he noticed that she'd also taken care to use up all the hot water. It had only been one night and her company was already tedious. "I've got to get out of here," he muttered to himself, throwing on some clothes and creeping out the front door slowly, careful not to disturb her. While he left, he stared down at her gaunt form for a few seconds, cringing in disgust. The sleeve of her robes was pulled up, exposing her Dark Mark, and she was snoring. Loudly. Leaving at last, he slammed the door as hard as he could, as to wake the portrait of Mrs. Black, who wouldn't mind Bellatrix, but would probably scream for a few minutes nonetheless. He rather enjoyed the prospect of going out of his way to annoy her--it's not as if she could have left.

Stopping at the nearest payphone, he called Hermione, then Ron, who was able to answer thanks to his father's tinkerings with a 'cellyfone'. He instructed both of them to meet him at a Muggle pub not far from where he was, so as to not be overheard by anyone they knew. He had sat there waiting for hours, taking the remnants and leftovers of other people's liquor, since he couldn't order any of his own (anything to keep his mind off Sirius), and, at long last, they came. He spotted Ron's flame-red hair immediately, and Hermione followed behind. "Alright, mate, what's this about?" Ron asked, anticipating answers.

Rather than letting it sink in gradually or taking it slow, Harry sputtered out, "Bellatrix Lestrange has broken into my house!"

"WHAT?" Hermione asked in shock.

"You have a _house_?" Ron asked jealously.

"Yes, 12 Grimmauld Place," Harry answered.

"Has she threatened you? What's she doing?" Hermione pressed for answers.

"She's not trying to kill me or anything," Harry insisted, leaving out the part about getting tortured. After all, what other way was there to break into a house? "She says she just needs shelter. And she gave me a rather cryptic remark. I don't know exactly what she said, but I think she was denying her loyalty to Voldemort."

"Well, of course. If you're breaking and entering, what else would you say?" Hermione said. "She could be useful," she continued. "Don't get rid of her just yet." Harry scowled in confusion. "Don't you see, Harry? You can use her as a hostage, or pry information from her!" Hermione exclaimed. Though Harry was reluctant to proceed, he slowly nodded. But how was he going to get any answers out of Bellatrix?

Ron had provided the solution to that one. "Take this mate," he said, pulling a can from his pocket. "Another Fred and George original. Just find some ridiculous excuse to get her to drink it, and then interrogate her."

Although Harry already had a pretty good guess, he asked, "What is it?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Verita-soda," she answered. "Ron's been looking for an opportunity to test it all week." Harry turned the can over in his hands, nodding at the quick and narratively convenient solution.

"Thanks," he said, still able to control his function of speech but beginning to sway slightly from the effects of the alcohol. "Tell Dumbledore that he can't use Grimmauld Place as the Order headquarters for a while," he said with a very subtle slur, "But don't tell him about Bellatrix, I don't want him to worry." Ron began to lead him out of the pub, as the owner was starting to get very suspicious, and they exchanged goodbyes before Harry walked back to Grimmauld Place.

Nothing could prepare Harry for what he could find when he returned, except perhaps liquor, which is exactly what he had consumed, and exactly why he wasn't completely aghast, a phrase which here means 'totally freaked out'. He did not act as though it was out of the ordinary to find the street full of people lying on their sides groaning in pain, some of them screaming, Bellatrix standing in the midst of it all. "Bellatrix?" he asked, peering through the air as if it was foggy outside. "What did you...what's...what's going on?"

Bellatrix turned around, an uncharacteristicly warm smile playing across her feaures. "Harry! It's good to see you!" she squealed, running to him and giving him a crushing hug. Even in his current state, he had enough sense to pull himself away.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah, that's right," she realized. Her strong-jawed visage and black waves of hair were replaced by the kind features and shocking pink hairstyle of Nymphadora Tonks. "I'm in disguise. Rodolphus Lestrange was here, and the Ministry thought I might get answers out of him this way. He was the only Death Eater here, but it might have been part of a larger operation." With an expression of painful concentration, Tonks rearranged her appearence to resemble Bellatrix once more.

"Did you find out anything?" Harry asked. Tonks shook her head, pointing toward the ground.

"He was the only one who died," she said. Looking where she had indicated, he realized he was standing mere inches away from the unmoving corpse of a man marked as a Death Eater. "Well, I'd love to chat, but I need to interview the witnesses, although the ones I've talked to are all half mad..."

Harry nodded, making his Unplottable house visible and stepping inside, hand grasped around his wand--seeing as Bellatrix's husband was dead on the street, there was no telling what she might do. When he entered, however, he found her in a secluded room, building a house of cards out of boredom. Her hands were trembling so much that he was surprised she'd built it as high as it was; it almost reached to the cieling and she was standing on two chairs. "They'll be dragging his body away for evidence soon," she uttered, stepping off the chairs and onto the floor. Harry tried to look compassionate about her loss, even though he was anything but. "Where did you go?" she asked as shakily as she'd stacked the cards.

"Groceries," Harry lied. "That's unfortunate," he forced himself to say. "Really terrible. I'm sure he meant...well...you must be..." he continued, trying to find words. "I guess what I'm trying to say is...would you like a soda?" he asked, handing her the can. She took it gratefully, reading the conveniently farce label and smiling.

"Cherry surprise. I love cherry." She popped open the can and took a sip. "That's really thoughtful of you, considering--well..."

"What was Rodolphus doing here?" Harry asked bluntly.

"He suspected me and found me here, so I had to kill him before he told Voldemort." Bellatrix took another sip, taking small steps to the toward the tapestry of the Black family tree. It was clear she didn't want to talk about it, and she was being as cryptic as she could, but she had no choice but to answer.

"Suspected you of what? And why would he tell Voldemort? You're both Death Eaters, aren't you?"

"That's how it started," she droned, "But after a while, I began to doubt Voldemort's abilities. He's only trying to kill you and live forever. A big waste if you ask me, as I'd find world conquest or at least small-scale conquest a much more suitable mission, and as long as he's alive, which could be pretty long, he'll hinder my progress." Perhaps the potion was beginning to take effect, as this result was a lot more informative than the last.

"So you deserted?" To Harry's latest question, Bellatrix only nodded. "And the people on the street?"

"Tortured them into madness," Bellatrix answered, scrutinizing the Tree as she spoke.

The expression 'making a mountain out of a molehill' refers to someone making a big deal out of something that ought not to be fretted about, but in current context, the expression 'making a molehill out of a mountain' might be more suitable. Torturing a street full of Muggles is definately something worth making a fuss about, but Bellatrix spoke of it as if it was an innocent prank. "They'll be fine after half a year in St. Mungo's," she continued.

"Are you sorry that Sirius died?" he asked, having more fun with Fred and George's product than he'd intended.

"No. And yes."

"What is this nonsensical double-talk?" he asked, a confused scowl forming on his face.

"You wouldn't understand," Bellatrix choked out, on the brink of tears. Perhaps it was a side-effect of the potion? He decided to continue his irrelevant questioning.

"So, now what are you going to do?" Harry asked. It didn't seem useful, but curiosity was getting the better of him.

"Good question," Bellatrix said. "I wanted to just wait until you destroyed Voldemort, but it's rather obvious, and Severus agrees, that you're never going to make it." Harry looked up, taking offense, but Bellatrix continued. "Now I guess I'll need an alternate solution, because as long as he's alive, I'll never be able to accomplish anything of my own. The other Death Eaters and I have an inside joke about me being a readymade minion and that I could never expect to survive on my own because I wasn't trained to detect Veritaserum and that sort of thing, because Voldemort might need to use it on us..."

She had begun to absent-mindedly finger the spot on the family tree where Sirius had been blasted off, but Harry wasn't paying attention to her actions. He'd tuned her out after the latest blow to his pride, and he had heard enough insults. Whispering slowly and separating each word with a small pause, he leaned over her shoulder and mockingly told her, "There's Veritaserum in your soda."

At first, he was under the impression that she was about to kiss him, which was a foolish notion, really. As she leaned closer, her expression softened and she reached toward him, and it came as a shock to him when she grasped his throat, crushing his windpipe as she throttled him back and forth for a few maniacal-laughter-filled seconds before letting go. He stumbled out the doorway, flexing his neck and making a vow to himself not to fall victim to her tight and painful grasp again. As he walked down the narrow corridor, he heard Bellatrix call, "I'm sorry for insulting Sirius yesterday." This was perhaps the most implausible occurance of the day. Surely it was some sort of ploy to catch him off guard? But how could she have possibly lied?


	3. Learning the Cruciatus Curse

If this story were comparable to a roller coaster, at this point you would be at the top of the first hill, looking down upon the nerve-wracking loops and twists you have yet to overcome. For those with a sick sense of humor, do read on, but rest assured that, since I do not own this brilliant universe into which you are delving, unlike on a roller coaster, you have the option of clicking the red X in the corner and picking up the more pleasant volumes of canon.

It was the middle of June. Harry still had a whole summer to spend in the unpleasant company of Bellatrix, as returning to the Dursleys was completely out of question, seeing as he couldn't leave a half-mad criminal alone in his house. He was reluctant to get out of bed, the only things convincing him to do so being his hunger and his desire to make some sort of sarcastic remark--fighting fire with fire, as he liked to think of it. "Bellatrix, your rent is due!" he shouted as he wrenched the door of his bedroom open, greeting the day with a scowl.

A loud pop behind him made him jump and nearly fall over the banister of the stairs, and he turned around to find none other than Bellatrix, having Apparated rather loudly, presumably on purpose, into his bedroom. "I know," she said flatly, failing to recognise his flustered gestures of annoyance. "And I'm paying it. It's time to train."

"Train? What?" he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"Yes!" she snarled, grasping his hand and leading him down the stairs despite his grunts of protest. "In the Dark Arts, you idiot! Do you honestly think I'm going to stand by and let you get annihilated by Voldemort?"

"What do you--"

"We've already discussed this!" Bellatrix barked, pulling him urgently into the living room. "I may be a fanatic, but I'm not stupid! I'm not going to sit around and miss my oppurtunities, and I'm certainly not going to allow Voldemort to keep me from my goals, so just learn what I teach you!"

Harry's eyes darted around uncertainly. He wasn't sure what Bellatrix was trying to pull. She let go of him and wiped her hands on her robes as if she'd just touched something foul and diseased, and he debated himself on whether to say something, ask for an explanation or quietly comply, taking each of Bella's actions as a piece of information in itself. "Now, people have probably told you that the Disarming Charm, Stunner, and Shield are your essentials. THEY'RE WRONG!" Bellatrix snapped, standing opposite Harry on the other side of the room. "So long as you can cast the Unforgivables, you stand a pretty good chance against most any adversary. Now, my personal favorite is Crucio, so we're going to try that one first. Well, go on, try and cast it on me," she prompted.

In his state of confusion, Harry was sure to flop miserably. He was completely unsure of his self-declared trainer's intentions. Somehow, this fact spurred the slightest hint of ferocity inside him. Perhaps this was a good opportunity to get answers from her. He knew, of course, that torturing a fellow human was immoral on so many levels, but she had committed more than her share of immoralities...without a further thought, he drew his wand, aimed it at her, and bellowed, "_Crucio!_"

For the first few seconds, Bellatrix did nothing. Then, a jerking twitch flowed through her limbs, she jumped a bit in place, and her fingers contorted as if she suffered from rhuemetoid arthritis. She began to cackle cruelly, an amused smirk creeping across her face. When at last she stopped laughing, though her unpleasant smile still lingered, she said, "Fool! That was completely pathetic! It's done like this!" She raised her wand and lazily pointed it at him, not even square in the chest, but in the shoulder: another inch upward and she would have missed. "_Crucio!_" she screamed. Instantly, every nerve in Harry's body twinged painfully. He crumpled to the ground, the impact of the fall adding to his pain. Each of his bones were searing, feeling as if they had snapped, his blood was on fire, his skin was dissolving, every inch of his being was being penatrated by a jagged, invisible knife...in short, he was undergoing every physical discomfort known to mankind, and then some.

"Get up, and let's try again, shall we?" Bellatrix insisted brutally. "Ready?"

Harry was anything but ready, but he refused to show it, and he stood up to try again, his every movement devoid of motivation. "_Cru--_"

"_Crucio!_" Bellatrix exclaimed, cutting off Harry and sending him to the ground, flailing and writhing in pain once more.

People nowadays seem to be under the impression that troublesome things, like falling off of a broom and skinning your knee, or getting tortured, get less troublesome the more times you do them. In the words of Bellatrix Lestrange, THEY'RE WRONG! Just as falling off a broom a second time and rupturing your already infected epidermis is just as troublesome, if not more so, than the first time it happened, and the second blow from Bellatrix left Harry even more uncomfortable, to say the least. His breath, which he'd struggled to regain, was knocked out of him even faster, and the stabbing, searing pain was more intense. Looking up before the torture forced him to close his eyes, he could see that she now had her 'game face' on, an expression which here means 'was looking exeptionally cruel and deranged'. A small pool of hatred seemed to bubble up from the pit of his stomach, but was supressed by overwhelming pain.

Five Crucios and much screaming later, Harry was on the ground, dripping with sweat and on the brink of begging for death: he would have done so if it were an actual duel. If anyone was efficient with this curse, it was the woman standing before him. It would be an understatement to say that he was experiencing excruciating pain, and unless you have ever been run through a dangerous piece of machenery, you have no idea what anguish was pulsating through his body. He had lost feeling in his legs, and all he could do was drag himself across the floor, sieze the front of Bella's robes, and beg for mercy. "Please, make it stop!" he pleaded. "I can't take it anymore!"

Bellatrix jerked backward. "I will not tolerate you begging and groveling at my feet!" she commanded. "Don't put the both of us through more indignity! I've already done enough of that before Voldemort for the both of us. It stops when you can make me stop. Now get up and curse me or leave!"

Harry's face contorted with rage as he gazed into her figuratively empty eyes. She no longer respected her Lord, or she had lost enough respect to start using his name, but still, she pushed Harry to the extremes with what she called a lesson. And yet, he was still in the dark, for the most part, and enraged that she could do this to him. He lowered his gaze and let go of her as he struggled to his feet in moments that may have well been years. She raised an eyebrow in mockery, watching coldly as he staggered from the room, he could feel her penatrating stare on him. _You are weak_, her expression seemed to say. He picked his wand off the floor and continued departing, but the burning in his nerves lingered--not from the Cruciatus Curse, but from his own fury--how dare she! She'd killed his godfather, and he wasn't going to let her get away with making him suffer this atrocity. A clear picture formed in his mind of Bellatrix's crumpled form, writhing on the floor on the other end of his wand, feeling the pain she'd inflicted on him a hundredfold...her torturing days may well have been over..._It's time to pay for your sins, Bella._

A step away from the doorway, Harry spun around, pointed his wand at her chest, and shouted, "_Crucio!_" He'd forgotten completely the wrongness of this deed, morality temporarily subsiding to madness, which, as he felt at the moment, had its perks. He watched her fall, screaming at first, her limbs contorted painfully, then filling the room with elated laugher, covering the sound of popping joints. Was she laughing because it hurt? Had she gone quite mad? "Yes!" she screamed, "You've done it!" She gave him the thumbs-up sign, while he stood in a daze, unable to comprehend her reaction. "Don't worry about stopping," she choked out sarcastically, "I can keep this up for another couple of hours."

Coming back to his senses, Harry lifted the curse and rushed to Bellatrix's side. "I'm sorry," he stuttered, helping her to her feet.

"Me too," Bellatrix said sheepishly, unwilling to admit that she should have gone easier on him. "No more apologies now," she said, panting and clutching a chair to support herself. "That wasn't bad, you now officially pose a threat, that was almost as painful as when the Dark Lord does it! But I think from now on we won't use each other as targets." Harry was satisfied to hear this and rather surprised that Bellatrix's cruelty would lapse at that moment. "Shall I see you tomorrow for another lesson?"

Harry simply nodded, limping into the kitchen. "I'll make breakfast," he grunted, gathering cooking utensils and a bag of bread. As he began to fry some eggs, Bellatrix followed him in and attempted to help, but her shaky movements were sure to spawn disaster, and Harry soon ushered her to the breakfast table.

"I was wrong," she said, "when I doubted you before."

"You invoked my rage," Harry grumbled.

"It was you." Harry blocked out her words. He didn't want to believe he'd done it on his own, that a few minutes under her curse had made him go mental. It was a simple reaction, what would any sensible person have done? "You'll stand a chance against the Dark Lord, and his last words will be, 'Tell Bella I'm sorry...'"

"Unlikely," Harry muttered, barely taking in what she was saying. He felt reluctant to listen, for fear of the awkwarness of takling to someone who he'd just tortured and been tortured by, but it wasn't nearly as awkward as he'd thought. After all, it seemed as if she was working in his interest. Her features softened into a sad expression.

"I can never go back to Mum and Dad now," she murmured. "I'm helping you...they won't have it..."

"Why would you want to?" Harry mused, putting some eggs and toast on the table for the both of them. "Aren't you tired of being trodden on by superiors? I can't say I advocate you taking over the world, but you shouldn't let them tell you what to do." He sat down beside her and her heavily lidded eyes met his as she grasped his hand a bit too tightly, her long nails digging into his skin--he figured it was just in her nature.


	4. Bella's Lament

If you have stuck with this twisted comedy all this time, there is no need to repeat myself and disclaim these characters, as they are not mine, and you, as the reader, should be rather thankful that you have the option of reading canon, as a couple of Starbucks (also not mine) and the pursuit of those Muggle Aurors has done nothing to make me consider the wants and feelings of the readers.

Roughly a week had passed, and Harry still had fleeting moments of blankness or deranged anger float through his mind. Bellatrix had told him the after effects of her torture would wear off in time, but until then, he struggled to get a firm grasp on his train of thought. Nevertheless, his skill in the Dark Arts continued to flourish; he was now a master of Sectumsempra, a curse causing its victim's skin to rip apart, leaving scarring and disfigurement, which they'd practiced on mice. He dreaded the day when he would have to use it on humans, but Bellatrix had insisted it was useful, and, as she hadn't done anything to hurt him since their first lesson, he felt obliged to accept her teachings. Granted, she was by far no Dumbledore, but, as he couldn't leave her alone to be destructive, he might as well have made use of her.

That morning, as Harry exited his bedroom, he noticed something very odd...extremely odd...there were no sounds of Bellatrix stirring and causing a general havoc. In fact, it didn't seem as though she was in the house. Surely she couldn't have left--for one thing, rain was pouring down hard outside, but rain would do nothing to stop her compared with the Ministry on her tail.

A few moments later, however, Harry discovered that Bellatrix had indeed risked a venture into the outsideonce again, not only endangering herself but putting Harry at risk for exposing him of harboring her, an escaped convict, in his house. So, the natural reaction on his part was to scream at her when she stormed through the front door seconds after he'd descended the stairs. "Where have you been?" he demanded. "You could have got yourself killed! You could have got me convicted!"

Bellatrix was not paying attention to his warnings, being occupied with some persuers and a large cardboard box. "_Sectumsempra! Crucio!_" she called behind her, slamming the door and setting down the wet and flimsy box. Her hair was plastered to her skin my water, and Harry was surprised to see mascara dripping down her rain-soaked face and onto her pajamas. "Oh, hush up," she snapped, "It was only those Muggle Aurors, I took care of them pretty easily."

"YOU TORTURED THE POLICE?" Harry furiously asked. "What were you thinking? Why were they after you in the first place?"

"I'm in the Muggle news," she snapped impatiently. "Geez, I can't even buy groceries!"

"Why are you wearing make-up?" Harry asked, having gotten into the habit of asking her irritating questions in between lessons.

"Am I allowed to make myself look nice?" Bellatrix asked, not realizing the irony that with black streaks running down her face, she looked rather ridiculous. "Or do you live to be so arrogant and disagreeable?" For a moment, she almost reminded him of Snape. "Well, what are you standing around for?"

Harry paused in thought. "Well, I just thought we were going to have another lesson," he said. He had begun to grow quite fond of them, especially after Bellatrix had demonstrated curses on rats and insects instead of him. Every now and then, they would even stop to have a conversation, and Harry savored each moment of these times, as every second Bellatrix spent reminiscing about old times was a second she didn't spend acting psychotic. Evidently, at the moment, it was not one of those times.

"No, not today. Leave me alone," Bellatrix muttered coldly, dragging her cardboard box into the kitchen. "Don't you have anything else to do?"

Harry sighed as he watched her walk out of view. He trudged up the stairs, contemplating his surroundings with boredom and disgust. The floor was covered in an irregular film of decaying insects and Doxy eggs, despite last summer's efforts to clean it up. To add to the mess, Bellatrix had been dropping her rubbish anywhere and everywhere throughout the house.

The heads of House Elves stared blankly at him from where they were mounted on the wall. Kreacher, muttering darkly to himself, took a second to pause and gaze longingly at them. "Kreacher, would you mind helping me tidy up?" Harry asked.

"If Mistress Bella wants Kreacher to do something, she will ask Kreacher. Kreacher will not take orders from the Blood Traitor." Harry swore under his breath, as did Kreacher. _Guess I'll have to clean up myself,_ he thought, deciding to start with Sirius's bedroom, the one Bellatrix had been sleeping in. _Too easy,_ he thought, _This is exactly what she wants me to do. Perhaps she's placed Dark enchantments in there, then ordered Kreacher not to clean anything, knowing I'd want to get rid of all the filth, so I'd be forced to use what I've learned to defend myself...smart._

Or perhaps the Cruciatus Curse had driven him as mad as Mad-Eye Moody.

"Constant vigilance," Harry whispered to himself humorously. He gave the door a very small push and let it slowly creak open. As it happened, there were no Dark spells waiting for him, only disorderliness and the shocking Gryffindor colors proudly covering every inch of wallspace, presumably put there by Sirius. A sock drawer lay in the middle of the room, detatched from a dismantled dresser. Various items from articles of clothing to newspaper articles were strewn about, and a bag of enchanted coffee beans had spilled in the open and unorganized closet. Accenting the red and gold decorations stuck to the walls were pictures of Muggle women wearing bathing suits and frozen smiles. The only Wizarding photo in view was one of a younger and happier Bellatrix, with a handsome Sirius at her side, his arm around her shoulders, unaware that she would one day bring about his demise. Next to the photo of the two cousins was an ebony plaque, containing a roll of parchment featuring clumsy calligraphy that, aside from minor differences, resembled that of Sirius.

My most prized possesion is a titanium box given to me by my mother, openable by a secret code that she taught me when I learned to speak. Inside this box is a key that opens another, slightly larger titanium box, given to me by a man whose ghost now haunts my shower, and within this box is the essay that Harry came across in that very plaque on the wall in Bellatrix's untidy scrawl. Even in the worst of times, retrieving and reading over her words touches me just as they had touched Harry as he first read them, for the side of Bellatrix that no one had ever known was revealed in its sentences, and it was a very surprising and touching side of her life indeed:

_When I first met my cousin Sirius, I was under the foolish notion that I might one day take over the world. Eager to gain support, my first words to him were whispers of my plan. At first I thought he was too young to understand, but it soon became evident that he was not too young to reach up, delicately stroke my cheek, and say, "Of course I'll help you. Who could deny such a beautiful mistress?"_

_His words made my heart explode. He was only ten years old, and yet he was eager to partake in the plots of a girl he'd just met, to reach up and plant a tender kiss on her cheek. It didn't matter that our hormones weren't yet functioning, for I already knew that I never wanted to be touched by any other lips but his. Auntie Walbuga had beamed at me and congratulated Sirius, and I'd blushed and said, "Anything to save the bloodline."_

_It soon became apparent that he was a little Blood Traitor, and my parents frowned upon his tendencies, but I was never bothered. He took me around and showed me aspects of the Muggle world I would have thought idiotic in any other case, but as long as he was by my side, I was having a great time. Though awkward stares burned through the back of my skull when we were together in public, his gentle touch never failed to comfort me. He was wise beyond his years, and I fell victim to his charm, and we both confessed every day to each other that we were meant to be.  
_

_Our relationship blossomed over the year, and we both anticipated the day he came to Hogwarts. I watched proudly from the Slytherin table as his name was called and he was sorted, but my happiness did not last long. "GRYFFINDOR!" the hat bellowed. Sirius gave me a meaningful look as he trudged along to the Gryffindor table. We rarely saw each other face to face after that, but we continued to send love letters, I was still his, and he was still mine._

_Eventually, the letters ceased to circulate. Sirius began to act more and more childish, and I was heartbroken when I saw what looked like a dirty look across his face directed at me. His Gryffindor friends had refused to accept our feelings, and Sirius used to tell me how he would refuse to listen, but, like all ideas, theirs sank into his mind with enough repetition, and he was made to believe that it was I who poisoned his thoughts._

_I won't pretend it didn't drive me a bit mad to be called deranged, evil, incestuous...the list of adjectives goes on and on. That James Potter hated me the moment I'd so much as laid a hand on Sirius, and Remus Lupin...to this day it sickens me to recall what he convinced my cousin to do. When we passed each other in the hall, the three of them would call me 'man eater', or, when they were feeling particularly nasty, 'Death Eater'. Peter Pettigrew was the only one of their lot who didn't torment me. _

_In time I married one Rodolphus Lestrange in the hope that Sirius would notice me again and miss my touch the way I missed his. Soon, the unthinkable became the unbelievable as I became a Death Eater in a desperate attempt to grab his attention, only to fulfill the predictions of James and Remus. Not a day went by when I didn't long for Sirius's kisses, and I was completely blind to reason. I had driven the wedge even further between us, and he had erased me from his life forever, leaving a great, empty void in my dying heart._

_He was my enemy now. I was his and he was mine. He was fighting to protect Harry Potter, and I was retrieving a prophecy for the Dark Lord for fear of death. I wanted him out of the battle, I wanted to stop fighting him so I wouldn't need to feel the pain anymore. Every curse I fired at him was a blow to my heart; he shouted insults at me, and my hand trembled with every new attempt to get away from him. I thought I'd forgotten our love, but after all those years, I could still feel the throbbing void in my soul. I Stunned him and he fell, he fell and fell through an unknown abyss and never got back up. What had I done? I had no earthly idea. I was half mad when I scampered through the Ministry of Magic, singing, "I killed Sirius Black!"  
_


	5. Miscellaneous Lessons

If it has not yet gotten through your thick skull that I do not own the Harry Potter series, you are a blithering idiot and have wasted twenty-nine words. In the time it has taken me to disclaim this story, it could have progressed to the point at which Bellatrix was staring at Harry from the doorway, her head tilted sideways like a curious child as he read the work she'd displayed on the wall. By the time Harry had realized Bellatrix was in the room, she had moved to a position directly behind him, making him jump and nearly fall backwards into the pie she was holding.

Harry was just finishing reading, a single tear falling to the ground. In one sitting, he'd learned of another person who held a grudge against his father, been reminded of Sirius's death, and imagined Remus Lupin doing things he hoped were only a product of the darker side of his imagination. "I'm sorry!" he exclaimed, struggling to rush out an explanation. "I didn't mean to read your stuff, I just came in here to tidy up, and it was just there--"

"If I didn't want it seen, I wouldn't have stuck it onto the wall," Bellatrix reassured. "I'm rather proud of your progress in the Dark Arts, so I baked you a pie." She held it out at arm's length th Harry, who was intrigued and shoked by her gesture. Either this was some sort of trick, or one of them was completely mental.

"Bellatrix? Are you feeling okay?" he asked, backing away. Bellatrix took a fork out of her pocket.

"There you go again, Mr. Disagreeable. Well, are you going to try some?"

Harry had learned from experience that it was unwise to offend Bellatrix, and, although he now could have cursed her, he now felt pity for the woman whose love had been taken from her, and, besides the point, he wasn't about to start a duel over pie. He took it into his hand and dug the fork into the flaky pastry whilst Bellatrix smiled suspiciously. Her eyes grew wide as he took a bite, and it was surprisingly delectable. The texture of the warm filling was just right, and there was something about the aroma that filled the air with calmness like a scented candle. "Wow, this is good. What's in it?" he asked, taking another bite.

Bella's breathing was fast and forced, as if she was trying to repress laughter. "Oh, you know, some stuff," she answered, her voice quivering. "Cherries, strawberries, sugar, rum...my blood..."

Harry set the metal pan on top of the dismantled dresser and gaped. "Are you kidding me?" he muttered, his hands trembling as he reached for his wand, as pie was no longer so trivial when it contained something so vile a human blood.

Bellatrix's laugher died, giving way to a straight face. "My blood is in the pie, Harry," she confirmed.

The expression 'a mixed bag' can be used to describe a plastic bag that has been put into a bowl and moved in a circular motion with a spoon, but it can also apply to a situation that is both good and bad. The spoon that mixed Harry's bag came in the form of Bellatrix Lestrange, his talented and equally sadistic new tutor of the Dark Arts, who had loved, been hurt by, and killed his godfather, and had just offered him a delicious pie full of blood. He was too revolted to believe it. It couldn't be true, could it? Struggling to keep himself from throwing up, he shakily drew his wand from his pocket, aimed at her, and spoke the incantation: "_Legilimens!_"

Scattered images of Bella's childhood and life filled his head. _Sirius handed her a wooden snake he'd enchanted so it would move...Bellatrix was sorted into Slytherin..."Get away from my friend, you scarlet woman!" James Potter was shouting..."He's your bloody cousin! You're sick! Death Eater!"...Now it was Bella's turn to yell. "Get away from him, half-breed!" Remus Lupin shot hexes at her to hold her off as he slammed the door in her face. Her eyes welled with tears... Bellatrix was branded with the Dark Mark... The screams of Frank and Alice Longbottom echoed off the walls...Sirius fell through the Veil. Bellatrix's eyes were open for the first time in years, and she realized that the very ploy she'd used to win Sirius back had actually led to his death. A part of her died along with him...Bellatrix baked a pie, thankfully containing no blood._

"What was that?" Harry asked in confusion."You just said--but--the pie, the blood, the Sirius--"

"It was a feeble attempt to trick you into performing Legilimancy, and, frankly, I'm surprised you fell for it. Of course, in the real world, you'll be up against more accomplished Occlumens than me," she smirked. "But it's a start. That was a lesson, but if you ever break into my head without my permission--"

Harry tilted his head. A greater surge of pity overcame him, and Bellatrix seemed remarkably unmenacing, so he felt perfectly comfortable cutting her off. "So you don't know Occlumency?" he asked.

"Oh, I know the theory," Bellatrix explained, "It's just that I'm out of practice. I never really have to use it, because I've just been--"

"Hiding behind the Cruciatus Curse," Harry finished for her. She nodded sadly. All that time, torture had been her shield, her comfort, she had fed off the ecstasy of her victims' screams as s Dementor feeds on human souls. "Well," he offered, "Maybe I can teach you a few things." It wouldn't be hard, he convinced himself. He'd practically been a professor the previous year, teaching Dumbledore's Army how to defend themselves, and, having deserted her master, Bellatrix would need more than Unforgivable Curses to survive.

"Will there be pie?" she asked hopefully. Harry removed a cherry and shoved it into her mouth, stem and all.

"Whatever happened to conventional methods of teaching?" he asked. Bellatrix spit the stem into her hand, having tied it in a knot in her mouth.

"What? I've been bored," she explained. Crazy, more likely.

* * *

"_Expecto patronum._" A single strand of silvery matter erupted from the tip of Bellatrix's wand. She sighed a hopeless sigh. "I used to be able to do this," she insisted, glaring at the cloaked contraption of clothespins and silverware they were trying to pass off as a Dementor. 

"You need to find a happy memory," Harry explained for the umpteenth time. "Or perhaps it would help if you were faced with an actual Dementor."

"NO!" Bellatrix shrieked. Harry could tell she despised them almost as mush as he did. She shivered at the very thought of them, a frightful expression overcoming her features as she pieced together her recollections. "When I was in Azkaban they made me hurt, they made me think of things...and Sirius wasn't helping, we kept shouting and arguing across the corridor..."

"Focus. I know you've got happy thoughts buried in your head somewhere," Harry said, speaking to her like one might console a child. "Happy thoughts, Bella." He stroked her hair lightly; she siezed his hand and pulled it away, scowling. She drew her wand once more, closing her eyes. Her stance became eerily still for moments that turned into minutes, and a smile came and went across her face. "Any day now," Harry breathed silently.

"I'm trying to concentrate!" Bellatrix snapped, her eyes widening into a menacing glare. She closed them once more, and, having finally settled on a single memory, spoke the incantation: "_Expecto patronum!_" A silver haze was emmitted from her wand, shining brightly, but still amorphus. She opened her eyes and gazed with wonder upon her creation before it fizzed into nothingness once more. "I did it!" she exclaimed, smiling with satisfaction. "You're a really good teacher, Harry," she whispered, sounding breathless. This was one of the things he never expected her to say. He wanted to tell her, 'So are you', but she continued speaking and his compliment was lost in their conversation. "Who taught you?"

"Remus Lupin," Harry said, bracing himself for harsh comments. He had seen her thoughts and knew she wouldn't take kindly to the mention of Lupin's name.

"I hate him," she said, exactly as Harry had predicted. She turned away, peering through the curtains at the sunlit street. Harry turned to leave, and Bellarix seemed to speak to herself her next words. "Sirius took me to a Muggle carnival once. He won me a wooden snake and used an animation charm on it. Then he dragged me onto one of those infernal 'roller coasters' with him, and halfway through, he said, 'So, this is what it feels like to be Crucio'd into insanity!'" A grin was brought to both Harry's and Bellatrix's faces.

"How did you respond?" Harry asked.

"I vomited," Bellatrix stated with a peaceful sigh. "Crucio'd into insanity," she repeated. "That was the inside joke between me and Sirius. I was the only one who ever acted on it. And after we went our separate ways, I suppose I took it with me..."

Harry shuddered. She had built a legacy of fear on an inside joke. "Was that the memory?" he asked.

"No, I just said that out of total randomness. OF COURSE IT WAS THE MEMORY!" Bellatrix snapped, sounding exasperated as if doing light magic for a change had drained her energy. Harry turned to leave. _She's such a mystery,_ he said inside his head, taking a last glance at her before rounding the corner. She was also rather beautiful, staring into nothingness, contemplating, seeming relatively normal for a change. Indeed, when Bellatrix wasn't a threat to his physical being, she was quite attractive.

_Bad Chosen One,_ Harry scolded himself in his mind. He reminded himself not to forget who she was: a sadist, a torture master, a criminal...who he'd grown rather fond of... _That's not normal!_ he told himself, _She's older than your mother would be!_ It took a lot of willpower to stop himself from banging his head onto the wall to try and knock out those thoughts. He was forced to laugh a little at himself: he felt like a bloody House Elf.


	6. Relapses and Memories

For fear of facing yet another lawsuit, I must inform you that I do not own the Harry Potter series, after which I can inform you of the next significant lesson of Harry and Bellatrix. This time, he was attemtping to learn the Killing Curse, but to no avail.

"No, no, you're making the most common mistake," Bellatrix said, grabbing Harry's wand arm and repositioning it. "Stop aiming at the victim."

Harry made a sarcastic face. "Well, then, how am I supposed to hit him?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at the 'victim', a wax dummy. He was grateful that it looked like a familiar Death Eater, for he was half expecting Bellatrix to have him aim curses at a replica of Remus Lupin.

"Aim _through_ the victim," she corrected. Harry was surprised by how much her instructions sounded like playing tennis. "Try again."

"_Avada kedavra!_" Harry shouted, flinging feeble sparks of magic at the dummy. Bellatrix shook her head. Time and time again, she'd told him, _you have to mean them_. As one may imagine, aiming curses at a wax figure who posed no threat was significantly different from trying to kill real, live Death Eaters, and Harry was having trouble imagining one in the place of the other. "What's my motivation?" he asked.

"Augustus Rookwood," Bellatrix said, pointing at the dummy. "You'll miss at first, but don't worry, you've got to get the wand motion right before you can start killing things. Right now, you're a bit rigid, it looks like you're trying to Stun," she continued.

If Stunning had been mentioned by anyone other than Bellatrix, Harry would have been fine, but coming from her, it was a bitter reminder. Unable to hold back the words, he said quietly, "That's how you killed him." He regretted saying it the moment it had come out. Hearing it, even from himself, made his eyes well with tears, and as he tried to blink them back, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Bellatrix said flatly, "It was an accident. It's awful, I wish we could have reconciled--maybe then, it wouldn't have ended that way--"

Harry was no longer listening, having stopped at 'accident'. "You could have Stunned him anywhere but in front of a mysterious..._thing_...right in the Department of Mysteries," he began, in a low voice at first, then transitioning into shouts as his voice trembled with anger. "So, it was all an accident? Why won't you take responsibility for your actions?"

"Harry, please! I'm trying, I just haven't come to terms with--"

"Yourself?" he asked. If she was going to start crying, she held it in well.

"I never wanted Sirius to die," Bellatrix slowly choked out.

"Well, he did," Harry spat, turning around. Bellatrix was uncharacteristically quiet. Moments passed, and she still had no retort. When he turned around to face her again, her wrist was twinging, sending a shudder up her arm, through her chest, and into her neck.

"I have to go," she whispered. "He's calling..." Harry siezed Bellatrix by the shoulders in a desperate attempt to shake her into realization, forgetting all of his previous hot-headed anger. As it dawned on him just who was calling her, he cringed in horror: if she went back to Voldemort's side, she could reveal Harry's weaknesses, whereabouts...everything. But why would she choose that path after all the help she'd offered him?

"Bella, snap out of it!" he called to her as if signaling someone in the distance. She smiled with twisted ecstasy.

"I have to go back," she droned. "It's an addiction...the power..."

"Whatever happened to world conquest?" Harry asked in a desperate attempt to bring her back to her original state of near sanity.

"Feeble childhood dreams as compared to the rewards...I'm his most loyal...most faithful...I have to...I'm trying, My Lord..."

There is a deep, dreadful sort of fear that one may feel once or perhaps twice in a lifetime, when the person in question becomes a victim of painful or menacing circumstances he or she can do little or nothing about. You may feel this way if you have woken up on a Muggle surgery table while undergoing an organ transplant, become trapped in a sinking vehicle, or, like Harry, if a poential love interest of yours has had the sudden urgge to make an escape to rush to the side of your arch nemasis. Unable to think of a better temporary solution, Harry continued to shake her back and forth, but she was squirming out of his grasp. Seeing only one option, he drew his wand, and declared out of sheer and utter desperation, "_Crucio!_" Nothing. _Mean it, Harry,_ he told himself. But how?

_Easily._ Despite this resolution, he had to force the anger and hatred into himself, ignoring the pity he felt for Bellatrix. This was, after all, a one-dimensional curse, so he tried to see her through the eyes of a one-dimensional man: a cold traitor was all she was in this view, an enemy, the killer of Sirius Black... "_Crucio!_" This time, she fell to the ground, writhing and screaming. Harry dared not lift the curse and let her Apparate. As if this was not difficult enough, the phone rang seconds later. He craned his neck no keep a clear view of Bellatrix as he picked up the phone, delighted to hear Hermione's voice on the other end, even though she sounded urgent.

"Harry, Dumbledore wants to see you at Hogwarts," she said. "It's odd, because school doesn't start for a few weeks--"

"Hermione! I'm glad you called," he said, as warmly as he could in the tense situation.

"Dumbledore wants to see you," Hermione repeated.

"_Stupefy!_" Harry shouted across the corridor at Bellatrix, rendering her unconcious, as his Cruciatus Curse had worn off. Regret washed over him as he realized he could have just Stunned her in the first place, sparing her the pain of torture. _What about Bella? _he asked himself, having no intentions of leaving her unattended during her relapse. "Hermione, can you come over and look after Bellatrix?" he asked into the phone.

"Oh, for the love of--she's still in your house?" Hermione screamed. "Do you think you can just leave her?"

"No, I think she's trying to get back to Vold--" Herry tried to explain. Hermione gasped loudly. "Please, Hermione, just Stun her, keep her unconcious, and don't let her escape!" Harry pleaded. The dial tone rang through his ears; Hermione had hung up. "Bella," he whispered desperately into the air. "I thought you'd changed." He said this with honesty, for of the many things she was: cruel, impatient, addicted to torture--Harry hadn't counted being a Death Eater ever since she'd admitted deserting under the influence of Veritaserum.

"No one...no one stops being a Death Eater," she rasped, barely holding on to conciousness. Where had he heard this before?

_Sirius._

The door to 12 Grimmauld Place swung open, a flustered Hermione slamming in shut once she was inside. "MUDBLOODS!" screamed the portrait of Mrs. Black. "CREATURES OF FILTH! EMBODIMENT OF SHAME!"

"Mudblood," Bellatrix whispered hoarsely.

"Don't say that," Harry ordered. Bellatrix remained silent as Hermione rushed to Harry's side, her bushy hair uncombed, having come in a rush. Harry nodded with gratitude and turned to leave, when he heard a faint tinkling of glass on the ground. Bellatrix had rolled a small vial full of a misty, silvery substance across the floor, and it colloded with Harry's shoe before he left. He lifted it with curiosity and pocketed it, looking towards Bellatrix for an explanation.

"I want to change," she admitted, "And I don't. I thought I could...Harry, if I lose myself, look at the memory..." Harry nodded, picking up his broomstick and heading out. "Help me. I don't want to hurt anymore. Keep me here, you Mud--" Remembering Harry's command, Bellatrix stopped mid-word.

* * *

"Harry, I'd hoped to give you private lessons this year. I tried to retrieve you at your aunt and uncle's house, but you weren't there. The last I heard, you were brooding alone in Grimmauld Place." Harry's eyes darted around, from an empty portrait on the wall to where Fawkes the Phoenix perched. He was glad to be back at Hogwarts, but speaking to his headmaster made him nervous. "Is there any specific reason I've had to relocate the Order?" 

"I just needed to see to some things," Harry explained, though it wasn't much of an explanation. He reminded himself a little of Bellatrix, the day she'd broken in, with her crypticism. The only difference was that Harry hadn't greeted Dumbledore with a Crucio in the face. "I'm already taking lessons, thanks, I'll consider it," he continued, trying to distance himself from Dumbledore, who more likely than not wouldn't approve of him learning the Dark Arts from an escaped convict. "It was nice talking to you, Professor, but if lessons are the only thing in question, I think it's time I left."

"Harry," Dumbledore said, gesturing for him to stay. "You've never been a very good Occlumens. What exactly are you hiding?"

_Oh, shit!_ Hary thought. _Clear your mind, clear your mind, don't think, nothing, nothing, nothingnothingnothing..._ Still, his thoughts strayed to Bellatrix, her relapse, her memory in his pocket. _Stop thinking!_ he commanded himself. _Her beauty, her laughter, the threat she posed with a wand..._

"Harry, I'd really rather you tell me." Harry's features were blank in his unsuccesful tries at clearing his mind. He clenched his wand within his pocket and stood up to leave, determined to keep his thoughts private. "_Legili--_"

"_Cruci_--"

"_Expelliarmus!_" shouted a panicked female voice, cutting across Harry's reckless spell. Nymphadora Tonks's ehes were wide and frightful, her breathing unstable as if she'd just witnessed murder. "Harry, what on Earth were you thinking?"

_Good question,_ he asked the mousy-haired girl inside his own head. What _was_ he thinking? He'd been trying to think of nothing, but his mind had actually been occupied with an involuntary surge of anger. Trying to find an answer to Tonks's question, he became stiff with dread, wondering if he had taken a bit of Bellatrix and Sirius's inside joke with him. _No...I'm not a torture maniac_, he repeated over and over in his mind. "I have no earthly idea," he insisted, "It was just about to slip out!"

"Bollocks!" Tonks shouted, kicking him in the seat of his pants out of Dumbledore's office, shocked and offended that he would sink so low as to perform an Unforgivable Curse. "Get out!"

Remembering Bellatrix's memory in his pocket, Harry struggled, as one might while falling down a spiral staircase, to say, "Wait! Professor, can I borrow your--"

"Forget it! Stay away from him!" Tonks shouted as Harry tumbled down the last few steps.

"Tonks! You're being irrational! You haven't even let him answer!" Harry called, but Tonks had already slammed the door. He shook his head in disapproval of himself. Had he really changed that much over the summer? Had he really nearly tortured his headmaster? For now, his questions remained unanswered, because he needed to find a place to view Bellatrix's memory, which she'd made seem so important just hours ago. _Great,_ he thought, _I've gone and gotten myself kicked out of Dumbledore's office, and now I need--_ after passing the word in his mind, he nodded in agreement with himself--he knew a place where he could view the memory, a place that would answer any of his needs...

_I need a place to view Bellatrix's memory,_ Harry told the Room of Requirement, pacing up and down the hall. _I need a Pensieve, obviously...and it should probably be Unplottable and made so that no one can get in..._ The doors appeared and Harry strode trhough them, examining his surroundings with satisfaction. A Pensieve stood in the middle of the room, just as he'd asked, and newspapers were strewn on the floor. He hadn't realized he'd needed it, but it was a comfort to see Bellatrix's face staring out at him from several of these papers, her features arranged into a confident smile from behind wisps of wavy hair, even though the headlines declared a ten-thousand Galleon price on her head. _Well, here goes..._

He unpocketed the memory and poured it into the Pensieve, following it in, falling, falling into a dark pit until he faced a slab of rock. Standing before the rock was a young and nervous Bellatrix, perhaps sixteen years of age, and a slightly less snakelike Voldemort, Bellatrix's hand bleeding at a dangerous rate. Voldemort nodded as she pressed her hand to the wall of rock, causing it to open. Bellatrix said nothing as Voldemort led her into a boat, but she peered with disgust into the surface of a black and haunted-looking lake, vacant-eyed corpses peering back at her.

Stikk gawking, she stumbled out of the boat onto a small island after her master, looking uncertainly at a stone basin emitting a faint green glow. "You know what to do, Bella," Voldemort ordered, thrusting a goblet in her direction. She kept her face straight in an attempt not to look frightened, but as she dipped the goblet into a green potion in the basin, Harry could see her mouthing, _oh shit!_

The first goblet she drank made her gag, supressing cries of pain. Her expression was one of dread, as if she'd been forced to test this system before. She took a second goblet, which made her collapse to the floor. "Hell no!" she choked out, but her trembling hand reached to fill the cup again, for Voldemort was now holding her at wandpoint. Her breathing quickened, she winced in pain, and, at long last, she let out a chilling scream, closing her eyes tightly although it was obvious that she was seeing horrible images.

"Don't hurt me anymore," she pleaded, while Voldemort shoved more potion down her unwilling throat. She screamed once again, sloping a last goblet over herself, she fell over, eyes blank and dead looking. Voldemort ignored the muttering and protests of his Death Eater, taking a heavy gold locket out of the basin and looking upon it with satisfaction. He set it back down and siezed Bellatrix by the throat. She refused to meet his crimson gaze.

"Don't you think, Bella, that it would be a nice tough if the victim of this potion would need to drink water, thus invoking the wrath og the Inferi?" he asked coldly. She forced a nod, having no choice, and he Levatated her into the boat. Perhaps if he hadn't been so absorbed in observing the object in the basin, he would have heard her mutter a single word as Harry had as he looked onto her memory, unsure if she was still seeing visions or clinging to the name for comfort:

"Sirius."

Harry was thrust from the Pensieve, stopping to collect and repocket Bellatrix's memory, although he couldn't imagine why she might want it back. He crept from the school, preparing to fly back to Grimmauld Place, and hoped she hadn't been too destructive in Hermione's presence. He shuddered at the remains of the memory still lurking in his subconcious. If Bellatrix was a mystery before, she was now a psychological thriller.


	7. Words Unspoken

Bellatrix was still sprawled in the corner when Harry returned to his dwelling. He prepared to give Hermione a speech of gratitude, but it appeared she was too busy crying to listen or respond to what he might have said. Harry put his arm around her as she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. If there was one thing that had been certain all day, it was that it is very, very difficult to speak to someone when they are experiencing what seems to be an emotional breakdown, and, whilst Bellatrix muttered darkly to herself, Hermione took several minutes to quiet down, finally allotting Harry the opportunity to ask, "What did she do to you?"

"Nothing!" Hermione sobbed, "She's just been lying th-there, telling the most h-horrible stories..." Hermione sniffled softly as Harry led her towards the door. "Disturbing images...I don't know if I can ever forget..."

"Thank you for keeping her here," Harry rushed out, slightly perturbed, but relieved that Bellatrix hadn't tried to curse his friend. "I hope it went better than my trip to Hogwarts. If there's anything I can do to repay you--"

"IT DIDN'T!" Hermione snapped irritably. She threw down her hankerchief and turned the doorknob shakily. "And if you'd like to repay me, NEVER expect me to babysit your pet Death Eaters again!" She wrenched open the door and stormed out, and even though she was still crying, the clinking of her shoes on the pavement was somehow more authorative, and she carried herself with a hint of Bella-esque formidability, as if everyone Bellatrix came in contact with was tainted with psychosis.

"I'm sorry," he quietly called out the window. He'd give her a call later, but, at the moment, he felt the need to rush to Bellatrix's side. She smiled weakly as he approached, nodding vacantly at his presence. "What was this?" he asked, in reference to the memory he now held in front of her.

Her head lolled to the side, a small wave of laughter erupting from her parted lips. "I didn't kill Roddy for nothing," she said. She wasn't answering his question, but, since as long as she ranted, she wasn't dangerous, Harry listened. "I wanted to be free, and that's exactly what I'm going to do." She seemed on the brink of tears, and Harry couldn't help but put his arms around her gaunt figure and rock her back and forth. "Sirius was free," she whispered. "That's what I want. I want everything he and I wanted so long ago...it took me until he died to realize it. I'll answer to no one. Just like him. But not Andromeda, she was a prat." Her head continued to wobble as she cackled maniacally to herself.

"Let's get you off the ground," Harry said, lifting her and setting her down on the sofa, where she continued to giggle and mutter. He shook his head comically, looking upon her with a mixture of pity and something else. "Bella, what is it about you?" he asked.

"I don't want to go back to Voldemort," she admitted. "I felt the Mark burn and had a moment of weakness. It won't happen again." She let her head roll to the side, causing her face to become obscured by her hair so that she looked ghostly. "I'd like to have people answering to me for a change."

"That's not what I meant," Harry said, though he was glad to hear it, and though Bellatrix didn't seem to have taken in anything he'd said, she seemed glad to say it. He couldn't say he supported her rather unconventional plans for world conquest, but at least she had come out of her relapse.

Over the next few weeks, Bellatrix spent her days sitting around, muttering, contemplating, and scribbling notes to herself on everything from napkins to the toilet seat. Harry couldn't say he enjoyed her more than he had when she was being spontaneous and torturing the police. The days wore on, and Harry found himself wondering if he wanted to go back to Hogwarts. Bellatrix's lessons, however infrequent they had become, were helping him excel further than he ever had in school, and he doubted he would be able to defeat Voldemort with 'Expelliarmus' or anything else he might learn at school.

"Bella, you should eat something," Harry advised, handing her a slice of apple as she lay sprawled on the sofa. At eleven o'ckock at night, her ranting was keeping him awake. "Stop trying to philosophize, or whatever you're doing." She took the apple and nibbled it halfheartedly, without lifting her head. Harry twitched in frustration, determined to bring her out of her brooding, but having no idea how. Having nothing better to do, he lugged the wax Rookwood out of the closet and positioned it in the middle of the living room. "_Avada kedavra!_" he shouted, moving his wand in an upward arc. He would have missed by an inch if a curse had actually flew out of his wand.

"Stop swinging your wand around like a bloody tennis racket!" Bellatrix commanded, jumping off the couch and demonstrating a more controlled motion. He should have known: nothing would get her attention more efficiently than an opportunity to point out his faults. Glad he had finally gotten Bellatrix to stand, Harry swung his wand in such an enthusiastic arc that a second later, he winced in pain. "Have you pulled something?"

"Might've."

"This could only happen to you, Harry," Bellatrix chuckled. She didn't sound cruel, as she often did when she laughed, but cheerful and delighted. "Well, I suppose that's enough for today, even though you've only been practicing for two minutes. You start school tomorrow, don't let them fill your head with all their weak magic." She smirked and conjured some ropes and sat down in a chair.

"I don't think I'm going back," Harry decided. "I much prefer it here with--what are you doing?" Bellatrix had begun to wind the ropes around herself, securing herself to the chair.

"Making sure I'm not tempted to Apparate. But are you sure? What about your future?" Bellatrix asked, passing the rope from one hand to the other, over her head, pulling herself to the back of the chair. "Don't you want to get a job?"

"We can think about the future when it comes, right now there's a war going on! And stop skirting around the issue, untie yourself!" he ordered, grabbing and unwinding her ropes. Perhaps it was unwise to leave her without some sort of control, seeing what had happened the last time she'd tried to quit cold turkey..._you're thinking of being a Death Eater like it's alcoholism,_ Harry thought to himself. Well, it was similar, wasn't it? Bellatrix had spoken of the addiction...but he didn't feel good leaving her tied up. "Why don't you just go and get some sleep?" he asked, "you must be under a lot of...stress..."

Bellatrix nodded gratefully as if she was being dismissed at long last, and trudged up the stairs to Sirius's old bedroom. "Finally," Harry murmured, rushing up to his own bedroom, only to find it completely trashed. The matress was disconnected from the bed to look like it was having intercourse with the closet, the walls were covered in condiments or something worse, the light fixtures previously affixed to the cieling were shattered on the ground, the grounded features having been glued to the cieling, and an overenthusiastic Kreacher was in the middle of the room, knawing on a dresser drawer. Harry felt like yelling at the unruly elf, but decided against it, reluctant to irritate Bellatrix, so he let out a long groan of distress before heading up to her room. "Bella, do you mind if I sleep in here--what are you wearing?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at her floor-length gold nightgown, having never seen her in something so bright and uncharacteristic. He actually rather liked it, though: it was the color of Gryffindor and Snitches and success.

"Always the comment about my appearence, eh, Mr. Disagreeable?" Bellatrix commented, looking up from The Quibbler, sporting the headline, _Bellatrix Lestrange: Criminal or Singing Sensation?_ "It was my Auntie Walburga's. Ghastly, isn't it?" Harry shook his head, and she beckoned him with hers, sweeping the old magazines and rubbish off of the bed, turned off the light, and lay down as he took his place beside her.

"Do you find this odd at all, maybe a bit weird and crazy?" he asked, looking out the window at the full moon: anything to distract him from the woman beside him.

"Crazy is as crazy does," Bellatrix blurted groggily. Harry furrowed his brow.

"What does that mean? Did you just make that up?" he asked, nearly shouting despite the nighttime atmosphere. "What does that mean?" he repeated.

"It _could_ mean that I ordered Kreacher to mess up your room," Bellatrix said. "I'm sorry, I just didn't want to be alone." The blankets rustled as Harry struggled to find words.

"I'm glad you did," he finally said. Bellatrix sighed softly. "Bella," he continued, "We've been stuck together in this house for a long time now, and I know this seems utterly insane, seeing as our age difference is astronomical--" Bellatrix stirred ans Harry knew she was scowling "--considerable," he corrected, "but I've become rather fond of your company and--"

"Get to the point," Bellatrix groaned sleepily.

"Bella, I think I--" But his last words were lost, as Bellatrix had already fallen asleep. "In the morning, then," he muttered, turning around and trying to sleep himself. He debated himself on whether to prod her and ask about the memory, but, he supposed it could wait until the morning. He put his arm around her and stared into her features in the darkness, taking in every detail of her beauty until he finally fell asleep.

What he didn't know was that nothing could wait until morning. Perhaps if he'd taken the moon as a warning sign, he would be halfway across the city instead of holding Bella close to him, thinking about the future of the Wizarding world rather than that of just the two of them, because, as it would turn out, treachery was not as far off as he thought. To my kind readers, this is your last warning, and you should be very thankful that I do not own or make the decisions of this universe, for following with the 'roller coaster' analogy of a previous chapter, you are rapidly approaching the point at which Muggles tend to experience cardiac arrest.


	8. Emergency Roadtrip

You will be glad to know that I do not own Harry Potter, and at the corresponding time in the canon universe, Harry is sleeping soundly in the Gryffindor dormitory. However, in this crazed rendition of history, he had just breached the barrier of REM sleep when Bellatrix shook him awake. Something was evidently wrong, as she was rushing around frantically, her eyelid twinging in pain while a sack of ice was affixed to her left wrist with tape, presumably to stop the burning. "I lost track of the date," she began to explain, "Yesterday you would have been on the train. I'll explain everything later, there's not much time!"

"I'm late for school? Is that why you've woken me up? I've already said that I'm not--" Harry started to say, but Bellatrix cut him off.

"You dolt! There's a planned invasion of Death Eaters!" she shouted as if it was completely obvious. Hurrying to pack necessities such as her wand, an extra wand (in case her wand was destroyed), and a plastic imitation of her wand (in case the extra was destroyed), she stubled to the window, and, gripping the sill, whispered, "Oh, holy shit!"

"What?" Harry asked, wondering what she could possibly be looking at. Similtaneously pulling a robe over her nightgown, she grabbed him by the back of his hair and forced his head out the window, facing upward to the round, full moon. A surge of realization came over him, and Bellatrix nodded, almost as if to tell him he was right--Voldemort would be using werewolves. He pocketed his wand and reached for his broomstick, but Bellatrix shook her head, taking hold of his hand and practically dragging him down the stairs. As she slammed the door behind them while they exited the premises, they could hear a faint segment of Mrs. Black's screaming idiosyncrasy, a word that here means 'habit particular to a specific person'. "Bella, what are you--?" he started, but Bellatrix was apparently practicing her own idiosyncrasy of cutting him off mid-question.

"I'm not going to let you pilot that broom, I'll be scared senseless," she declared. "_Alohamora!_" The door of a nearby Muggle automobile unlocked, and Harry and Bella got inside, the latter raising an eyebrow at the Texas licence plates. "Fenrir Greyback will be coordinating the attack. He's trying to build a werewolf army. Bloody psychopath, he is, even moreso in bed...I'm kidding!" Bellatrix added in response to Harry's look of shock, which only turned more shocked that Bellatrix would dare joke in the given situation.

Harry was once again filled with questions. "Wait, we're stealing a car?" he shouted, while Bellatrix tried to quiet him and prevent the waking of nearby Muggles. "Why didn't I know about this sooner? How are we--BELLA! YOU'RE DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD!"

"I'm also driving on the wrong side of the car," Bellatrix spat irritably, leaning under the dashboard and muttering incantations. Her head seemed to have collided with the gas, and Harry was forced to grab the wheel to prevent a hindering crash. When at last Bellatrix grabbed hold of the steering wheel again, she pressed the gas harder than ever, but rather than go plowing through one solid object after another, it took flight. Harry clung to the open window as the wind forged its way into the vehicle, taking an occasional glance at the vacant-eyed Bellatrix. "Voldemort dropped some heavy hints about how he keeps coming back," she droned, "and, thirsting for information, I paid him a rather hefty bribe for more. It seems that he's somehow able to stick pieces of his soul into stuff, and that locket you saw had some of him in it." Like many things Harry considered to be of great importance, Bellatrix spoke it as if it was simple, obvious, and relatively uninteresting.

"How much did you pay him?" Harry asked. Bellatrix remained silent, pushing so hard on the gas pedal that he was surprised it hadn't broken yet. Her eyes narrowed and she clenched the wheel, biting her lip as if she'd been insulted. A loud thump resounded off the roof; Harry was certain they had just crashed into a large bird. Bellatrix continued to speed, though the unwarranted tension slowly faded, and soon they found themselves hovering above the glassy surface of the black lake, with its pinpricks of light from the car's headlights. A light mist obscured the air, and it would have been rather romantic if it wasn't for Bellatrix's reckless driving.

"Where should I park?" Bellatrix asked, craning her neck, looking for somewhere to land.

"My Uncle Vernon looks for the 'dream spot'...right by the door, see?" Harry suggested, struggling to see through the rapidly thickening mist.

"No, there are trolls right there," Bellatrix explained flatly. "Well, that means the protective enchantments will have fallen..."

"You mean we could have just Apparated?" Bellatrix grinned sheepishly while Harry shook his head. "Move in cocentric circles until you find a spot," Harry advised, not having a clue what he was saying. Apparently, neither did Bellatrix, for she headed towards a random and obscure patch of grass. Harry winced slightly, preparing for a rough park, but Bellatrix screamed in fright, and with good reason: Dementors were significantly more problematic than a potential car crash.

Harry froze, reaching for his wand, but Bellatrix was determined to beat him to it. Seeing as to his knowledge, she couldn't produce a corporeal Patronus, he held her back, insisting that he hold off the Dementors. "You just drive!" he shouted, but Bellatrix evidently had something to prove.

"I'll do it, you can take the wheel," she commanded. Harry, as one might imagine, was too anxious to steer. He watched Bellatrix lean out the window with white knuckles. Though she was clearly shaken as the Dementors swooped around her, eager to feed off of her haunting experiences, she closed her eyes in concentration, and then...

"_Expecto patronum!_" A great, shaggy dog leapt from the tip of Bellatrix's wand, charging at the Dementors, driving them further and further away. Bellatrix slumped against the side of the wall, exhausted, as she'd been so flustered she didn't realize she'd channeled magic through a plastic imitation of a wand. _Sirius,_ Harry thought, the single word echoing in his mind as he gazed with pride at Bellatrix's dog Patronus, but the extasy did not last long: with no one steering the car, it veered through the air, Hogwarts growing larger and clearer as they approached, until it finally hit the side of the building with a deafening crash. "So this is how it feels to be Crucio'd into insanity," Harry shakily mumbled, Bellatrix sighed, glad the dreadful drive was over, and somewhere in the Great Hall, in the midst of a frenzy of screams, Alecto Carrow jumped and exclaimed, "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL WAS THAT?"

"Re-enforcements," Voldemort answered with a knowing smirk.

Severus Snape averted his eyes to the source of the crash with disinterest. Glancing at his master, he muttered with an air of satiefied sarcasm, "I told him not to let the Lestranges drive."

"Now, the plan was that me and Dolohov would arrive, but he would be disguised as you," Bellatrix explained hastily as Harry listened. "This whole battle is a diversion, along with a recruiting mission, if you think about it. The real Harry Potter is supposed to be halfway to Brazil by now, but what the Malfoys don't realize is they've been passed Dolohov, tied up, and Polyjuiced to look like you, who they're now transporting by a series of Portkeys. Just act like you would during a battle, but don't injure anyone too bad, or both sides will suspect something."

Peering at the clock, Harry exclaimed, "You took care of all of this before three in the morning?"

As they opened the car doors, Bellatrix nodded, moving quickly to avoid being noticed. "Imperius Curse...oblivious brother-in-law...yeah," she stammered. "Don't get your hopes up, though, the worst has yet to come."

Still shaken from the impact of the crash, they staggered towards an open window, hand-in-hand. Harry knew for a fact from the screaming inside the school that the worst had indeed yet to come, but with Bellatrix at his side, it was all okay. He grasped her hand tighter, smiling at his own foolish thoughts. The situation was, in fact, anything but okay, as even if they were to succeed, Voldemort's soul could very well be scattered around the world within random objects, but on the other hand, Bella's teachings were sure to come in handy, and, as long as she was there with him, for reasons he couldn't entirely explain, everything was, it a twisted way, okay.


	9. The Showdown That Went Slightly Wrong

Though I'm sure you grow tired of these conveniently placed disclaimers, only after I've told you that I don't own Harry Potter and that this is in no way canon, though the bits that hold some resemblance to canon are happening a year ahead of schedule, can the story legally progress to the point at which Harry and Bellatrix climbed through an open window, immediately heading in different directions as to not arouse suspicion. A massive battle was already clearly underway, so it wasn't difficult to make an entry, but more disturbing was the number of unconcious people strewn across the floor. Parvati Patil was staggering to her feet, bleeding from the shoulder--Harry desperately hoped she hadn't been bitten. Lavender Brown had just been stunned by a Death Eater, Neville, despite putting up a good fight, was faring poorly against two Death Eaters, Ron and Hermione had each others' backs against a handful of cloaked figures, and Dumbledore was dueling, and winning, against a party of five or six. The Order of the Pheonix was spread throughout the room, but they were greatly outnumbered, and in the middle of the hall, two werewolves, in full form, were battling, everyone giving them a twenty foot radius.

"_Stupefy! Stupefy!_" Harry shouted, Stunning every Death Eater he could aim at as his first reaction. Bellatrix yanked him into one of the darker corners. "What are you doing?" he demanded.

"You're going to let everyone know you're really you!" she hissed. "Act more reluctant!" She pushed Harry back into the fight, not realizing the flaw in her reasoning, that the students and Order would grow suspicious if he held back on the curses. Another flaw that she failed to realize was that, in pushing him onto the floor covered in fluids that are best left unmentioned, he fell onto Luna Lovegood, whose wand fired a jinx knocking Michael Corner to the ground, who fell on Dean, who in turn fell on Arthur Weasley, who elbowed Tonks, knocking her into the middle of the battle between Fenrir Greyback and Remus Lupin, setting off a chain of events that somehow led Crookshanks to aquire a wand and fire a hex at Walden Macnair. By this time, Harry had regained his footing and was discreetly firing curses at Greyback. He could see that Bellatrix was doing the same, only her jets of red and green light were a lot more aimless.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

Bellatrix moved her ai from werewolf to werewolf. "Frankly, I'm not sure who I want to shoot," she answered with an unreasonable amount of calmness.

"That one's Greyback and that one's--" Harry began to point out, but Bellatrix's expression obviated her feelings more efficiently than a large, blinking sign reading 'I despise Remus Lupin'. "Never mind, just go and duel someone else!" Bellatrix slunk away, doing as he said and dueling a few Weasleys, and he fired a last Stunner, hitting Greyback in the head whilst Remus continued to tear at the unconcious werewolf. Was it vengance? It definately wasn't madness, as he had not harmed Tonks: in fact, he seemed to have kept her out of harm's way. And speaking of madness...

"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" Molly Weasley was shouting at Bellatrix only a few feet away. The remnants of a Killing Curse originating from Bellatrix's wand soared an inch above Ginny's head. Harry was unable to tell of it was part of the act or if she'd indulged in an attempted murder, though he had trouble believing that she would try to kill students while they were fighting Death Eaters. At the moment, Bellatrix was firing curses and indulging in a fit of gloating, maniacal laughter. The two women were engaged in an apparent fight to the death, one of the most unpleasant types of fight to find yourself in the vicinity of, and, in light of the circumstances, Harry wasn't sure who he wanted to shoot.

"Stay back! She's mine!" Molly declared as Harry tried to break up the battle. "_Avada kedavra!_"

Harry felt as though he had frozen with shock, but his limbs acted of their own accord as he impulsively jumped into the path of the curse and pushed Bellatrix to the ground, both of them missing the curse by centemeters. There was no denying it anymore: without Bellatrix, Harry's life would be empty, he couldn't stand idly and watch her die, he needed her company as much as he needed her lessons in the Dark Arts. As all of the present Weasleys and several more onlookers gasped in confusion, Harry grabbed the front of Bellatrix's robes, pleading, "Please, Bella, don't be dead...don't be dead, Bella..."

For several moments she refused to stir, and then she whispered with a cynical smile, "I would be if you'd have slammed my head to the floor any harder." Harry smiled gratefully, but Molly was flustered.

"You laughed too soon."

"It runs in the family."

"Harry? What are you--you saw her, she tried to kill Ginny! What's the meaning of this?" she asked, and, much to everyone's surprise, she was mirrored by a sinister voice coming from the gates. Commanding the silence of everyone were three men, Lucius Malfoy, the almost-untied Antonin Dolohov, and Voldemort.

"What _is _the meaning of this?" he asked, examining the fallen Death Eaters. Bellatrix stood up, much to Voldemort's shock, which said an awful lot, considering the shock he must have already experienced upon finding his servant in the arms of his arch nemasis.

The expression 'in the dark' literally means to be somewhere with little or no visible light, but it can also be used when a person is in ignorance of the goings on around him. For example, you may find yourself lurking in a corner hidded by large objects blocking the light, but be completely aware of the plans your followers are carrying out on your orders, making you in the dark not in the dark. You may possibly step into the path of visible light in realization that one of your followers has been plotting behind your back, thus making you no longer in the dark having been in the dark, and this was exactly the situation Voldemort found himself in as he heard Bellatrix mock, "What is the meaning of this, indeed?"

Without waiting for a lenghty speech on Bellatrix's part, Voldemort bellowed, "_CRUCIO!_" Bellatrix dodged with a small scream.

"_Crucio!_"

"_Expelliarmus!_"

"_Sectumsempra!_"

"_Crucio! Expelliarmus!_"

"_Crucio!_" Bellatrix wore a triumphant grin as she watched her former master fall, seemingly unable to believe it. A wave of passionate laughter escaped her lips as she continued to channel the curse, becoming more exhausted by the second since she was once again channeling magic through a plastic wand, having been disarmed twice, but showing no signs of caring. "You think I'll just be around forever to do your bidding, eh?" she droned betreen fits of cold cackling. "You have driven me off the deep end, you have. Do you hear me?" Voldemort stifled a cry. "I'm not going to stand to be your little plaything. No more second chances! No more relapses! BELLATRIX LESTRANGE HAS FINALLY SNAPPED!"

Her curse seemed to intensify, as Voldemort moaned in pain. Death Eaters and Order members alike gasped once more, and a rather dim-witted Hufflepuff girl asked feebly, "Who's Bellatrix Lestrange?"

"_Me, _you blooming idiot! _Crucio!_" Bellatrix shrieked, evidently intent on a rampage to let out the madness. "Harry, hurry up! Finish him off before he gets up!"

Harry contemplated obeying Bellatrix, but he had also picked up her habit of playing with his food before he ate it, so to speak. "_Legilimens,_" he stated, wand pointed at the head of a still bewildered Voldemort. _Albus Dumbledore sat before Tom, explaining that he was a wizard...__A young Tom Riddle tortured Muggles in the very cave he and Bellatrix had visited in the other memory..."Not my son, please!" Lily Potter pleaded, but Lord Voldemort had no mercy for the Mudblood... _Harry cringed, trying to withdraw from Voldemort's mind to kill him at last..._"I've told you about my Horcruxes, Bella, and now it's time for you to keep your end of the bargain"_...

As to the details of the last memory Harry witnessed before pulling out, there is a gaping hole in my research, which works out fine in your advantage. After all, when asked what you've recently read, it would be embarrasing to have to answer 'the intimate life of Lord Voldemort.' So, the plot forges forward, to the point when Harry moves his wand in an arc, aiming _through_ said Dark Lord and blasting him clear out of our dimension: "_Avada kedavra!_"

"_Avada Kedavra,_" Bellatrix repeated, "Just like your eyes." In a split second, Harry's emerald eyes met Bellatrix's violet ones, she looked hopeful, and he too was hopeful, hopeful that she might switch sides all together, forget the 'world conquest' rubbish, and come home with him, but he was undeniably wrong, as he would come to realize minutes later.

Death Eaters screamed, everyone else cheered, and the dim girl from before shouted, "'Abra Kadabra?' What the hell?"

Bellatrix applauded slowly. "He'll be back," she said darkly. "He always comes back. But when he does, he'll find all his followers acting on my orders."

A wave of confusion overswept the Death Eaters once more. The students were still cheering, but Harry was feeling nautious: would Bellatrix be even worse than Voldemort, taking action and burning down cities instead of fretting over immortality with the occasional attack? "But you--you were his most loyal--most faithful--" Alecto stuttered, completely flabbergasted.

"_Most loyal, most faithful,_" Bellatrix mocked. "Are you all completely blind? We can't just serve one master forever, with his flawed plans and no action? What about your needs? Hell, what about mine?" She paced the floor as she ranted under her breath. Amycus Carrows fired a misaimed hex at her, the Death Eaters began to mumble amongst themselves, and Harry didn't know what to make of the situation.

"After all this time?" he asked. "Bella--"

"I thought you knew what I'd do at this point," Bellatrix said.

"I thought you'd changed," he explained, realizing how foolish his statement was after he'd said it. Bellatrix? Changed? Unless it was by reason of insanity, the very idea was near impossible. Also seemingly impossible was what she did next: a single tear ran down her face before she turned on her heel and stormed out of the castle, having given up, hurt, defeated by Harry's words.

Though words are made of ink, pixels, or vibrations in the air, uncapable of harming human beings or any other life forms, the meaning they hold can be more powerful than an Unforgivable Curse. As Harry heard the clinking of Bellatrix's shoes grow more and more distant, he tried to piece together an understanding of what his sentence had done to her. Had she come to a sudden realization? A surge of guilt? He could think of nothing that might fully explain her reaction, and, as she finally walked out of view, while Rabastan Lestrange cast Harry a nasty look, he tried to call something to her that might convince her to return, but he found he couldn't find the words.


	10. The Relevancy Of The Title

I solemnly swear that this is tha last time I will be forced to disclaim this story and upset its flow as much as Bellatrix's flight had upset Harry, although that in itself would be an exaggeration, as these seemingly catchy disclaimers have not caused you to pace up and down your house, muttering and shouting one minute and blinking back tears the next.

As Harry soon learned, it was not one of his better ideas to introduce the Order of the Phoenix to phones. Ron and Hermione both had the same response to what he had to say: "Bellatrix is gone? Finally! Thought she'd never leave you alone!" Meanwhile, Tonks and Remus were asking for an explanation of his near-interception of Molly's Killing Curse intended for a Death Eater, and even Mundungus Fletcher, with his telemarketing tactics, attempting to sell Harry inexpensive silver, was not helping the situation.

Days passed by, then weeks, and Harry would continually steal glances out the window to watch for any sign of Bellatrix. Mrs. Black's fits of screaming took a backseat to his own occasional outbursts, and even Hedwig and Kreacher seemed mildly disturbed. He imagined he felt as Bellatrix had after her relapse--struggling to let go of something. Taking a leaf out of her book, an expression here meaning 'to imitate or follow one's example', he began to question his feelings on parchment, and, when he ran out, toilet paper, scraps of the Daily Prophet, and the walls. He would lie on the sofa and stare into space for hours on end, thinking, wondering if and how Bellatrix was surviving, worrying for her, questioning himself, and drifting into nightmares. The only certain thing was that Harry was a victim of more than his fair share of irony: he had finally eradicated Bellatrix, just when he'd realized he couldn't live without her, as confirmed by the various scraps of literature he'd written and strewn about the property.

However victimized by irony Harry happens to be in this particular contorted rendition of fact, it is also a commonly known fact of his universe that he is befallen by a substantial, or as some consider it, an unreasonable amount of luck, so it is reasonable to assume that circumstances will eventually play out to his favor. Sure enough, a knock on the door sounded, waking Mrs. Black and startling Harry out of a contemplative trance.

If Harry had bothered to ask who it was, he might not have opened the door, as he never would have thought that Mundungus Fletcher on his doorstep would be a good sign, but, as he halfheartedly flung the door open, he was overjoyed to see Mundungus, with half of his face covered in bruises, his clothing torn, restraining a struggling Bellatrix with much difficulty. Bellatrix struggled against his grip, her own damaged clothing, weathered frame, and sleepless expression making her barely recognisable, though she was clearly just as irritable as before. "This yers?" Mundungus grunted, thrusting Bellatrix over the threshhold and into Harry's arms. He embraced her warmly, while Mundungus, being unfazed by the emotional moment, went on to explain his troubles. "She's been terrorizing the park for days, scared all the Muggles off. I haven't been able to sell anything."

"Bella, you're shaking," Harry whispered, ignoring Mundungus and noticing Bellatrix's instability on her feet.

"I must have had fifteen coffees," she muttered, her voice trembling.

"Nearly blew apart the coffee shop," Mundungus added. "Went totally bezerk when she saw me, she did. Shot this big silver stag at me--"

"Stag?" Harry repeated, looking up at Bella. Her Patronus had changed form? Had it changed for him?

"With good reason. He's been nicking Black family heirlooms," Bellatrix accused with a note of hostility.

"Oh yeah? That don't explain why yeh nearly tore me apart on the way here," he snapped, stepping back to avoid any curses that might result from his statement.

"I thought you were turning me in to the Ministry," Bellatrix muttered.

"Nah, I'm a bit of a wanted man meself," Mundungus explained. "Stolen cauldrons. And I could hardly deposit her to the Death Eaters, so I couldn't think of anywhere to put her then with you." Bellatrix was still glaring daggers at him, while Harry, thinking that it might please her, grabbed some artifacts out of his pockets as he turned to leave. "Bye then."

Bellatrix grabbed hold of the door and slammed it as hard as she could before any more words could be explained. "He was nicking your stuff," she pointed out, still not quite able to support herself. Harry was overcome with worry, and though he wanted to show her the silverware and heavy, emerald-encrusted locket that he had reclaimed, he needed to tend to her first.

"Have you been living on the streets all this time?" he asked, leading her to the sofa and wincing at her small grunts of discomfort.

She gave him a penatrating, sad look more powerful than her Cruciatus Curse as she sat down and huddled under a throw blanket. "I didn't think you'd care what I did," she said. "I wanted to take over the Death Eaters, but not if it made you sad."

"So you just left? Bella, I was worried about you! I'm still worried about you!" As if to emphasize his point, the color drained from his face as Bellatrix nearly fell off the couch, he pushed her back on and frantically headed to the kitchen. "You stay there, I'll get you something to eat."

Bellatrix wasn't exactly sure what to think as Harry gave her assistance, but she was grateful for the greeting, which was much warmer than the first time she'd turned up in 12 Grimmauld Place, although she was partially to blame for his unwillingness to welcom her that time. Surveying her surroundings, she noticed that the house had become rather disorderly in her abscence. Her eyes rested on the scrawling of sentences in ink contrasting the wallpaper. "Wall writing," she observed, "How nice."

As she read over the words, it was more like she was drinking them in, and by the time Harry had returned with some soup and a distracting issue of The Quibbler, Bellatrix knew that a chapter of Harry's life and her own was coming to a close and a new one was beginning. She knew, and was rather thankful, that she could retain her lust for power while pursuing even greater ends, and, however implausible as everything else that has reached your eyes if you have been reading for this long, a small chapter of her complicated life had been resolved.

_Bellatrix Lestrange is not your average houseguest. In fact, she isn't exaclty the average offender of the crime of breaking and entering, either. She is powermad, unpredictable, and, to put it simply, rather scary. But this is just Bellatrix at first, the one that leaves the scarring first impression, and, ironically, the one that doesn't matter in comparison to the rest of her personality._

_The real Bellatrix Lestrange, I have learned, has a knack for teaching the Dark Arts, if she does go a bit overboard with the Cruciatus Curse. In accordance with her first impression, she loves nothing but power and the Dark Lord, but the real Bellatrix, the one deep inside that, with patience and a bit of snooping, can be reached, also had Sirius Black. Her love of the Torture Curse grew out of an inside joke, as it turns out, that the two of them shared. Once upon a time, she didn't mind Muggles so much, so long as her lover was right there by her side, helping her tolerate them. She has a way of doing the unexpected, even on accident, which would be unexpected anyway, although in her case, it's more extreme, as I've witnessed firsthand when she relapsed into her Death Eater phase. _

_Phase. Is that even possible? No one stops being a Death Eater, she told me herself. Somehow, though, I have a feeling that's exactly what she's done. At least, I hope so, as every time I've watched Voldemort hurt her, I'm a little hurt as well. _

_She fights exactly like her cousin, I've noticed. She laughed too soon. I had to save her life, and even still, she's bent on world domination, or something to that effect. I've never quite understood that part of her, but it's the other part, the side of her that grieves for Sirius and knows how to recieve affection, that's worth reaching out to, even if it means getting a side order of insanity._

_I suppose whet I'm trying to ask myself is, can I let her carry out her crazy plans? If I ran into her again could I pursue her, knowing there's nothing I could do to change her or make her switch sides? And would this put the world in jeopardy, if and when her rampage of city-burning and conquest I've been dreading becomes reality? They say that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. After hours of contemplation, I've come to the same conclusion over and over again: the needs of the world will have to wait, because I'm in love with Bellatrix Lestrange._

Bellatrix picked up the spoon Harry had put in front of her, reluctant to take her eyes off the wall. "Given a chioce between me and the world, you would choose me?" she asked, astonished and feeling warmed inside.

"Crucio will do that to a person," Harry joked. The both of them giggled.

"Well than, will I see you for training bright and early tomorrow, _Lieutenant_?" she asked with a smile.

"I wouldn't take it that far," Harry said, curling up next to her on the couch. For once, he wasn't thinking of those people in the park or coffee chop, repremanding Bellatrix for just being who she was, and trying to play the hero. He only thought of her beside him, her warm and accepting smile, glad she'd come back and he'd gotten a second chance. He shared his own, private world with her within the confines of 12 Grimmauld Place, finally able, at least for the moment, to shut out the troublesome one outside. For the time being, all was well.


End file.
